In America workaholism is a more widespread epidemic , at least that's my gut feeling.

Overworked and overstressed. You'd think we'd come around to working less hours a week, I'm happy with my salary because I don't have to take work home with me. If you are satisfied working 14 hours a day, well you are insane. I just think folks that do that and have spouses or children, are sacrificing them.

"I work 80 hours a week one job and I never have time for my family!", might have thought about the family first before the career. If I plan on having a family, I ain't working a career that requires me to spend an exorbitant time away from my family. I want to be at every soccer practice and game, every piano recital and performance, I want to be active in my kids' lives and also be at my wife's side, spend time with her and help her whenever she needs it.

I think its BS when someone's gotta use an excuse that they gotta work instead of interacting with their kids. Now if they have a real reason why they gotta work 2 jobs to keep a roof over your head, food on the table and all that, OK that's different.

I dunno, I've seen people get burned out by these high paying glitzy jobs. It ain't worth it.

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Hmmmmm... I think science is the only thing standing in the way of your theory.

Actually, porn addicts experience the same brain physiological changes that substance abusers such as heroin addicts and alcohol addict experience. 'Workaholics' occasionally incline towards OCD, and it really is not a clinical addiction. Most of the time, it is just flat out avoidance.

The primary difference is that behavioral addicts, such as gamblers and sex addicts, get their brain chemistry alterations through a physiological reaction rather than a chemical agent. Sex addicts in particular have a noticeably different chemical reaction to viewing porn that those who are not addicted. This is, again, based on university studies.

You could just turn off the computer. You could also just not drink. You and I both know that alcoholism does not go away with just taking away the drinks. Same is true with porn addiction.

I do believe that AA and the 12 Steps are often hijacked by the Rehab Industry. The Bible and Christianity has also been hijacked by heretics and charlatans.

However, dismissing many of these addictive conditions is to fundamentally misunderstand the problem. The problem is not with the 'disease' of addiction any more than a runny nose is itself a disease. The underlying problem is the passions, and the passions can cause us to lose control over ourselves in any number of ways.

I don't advocate going to 12 Step meetings and identifying as an addict unless it is an absolute last resort. The fact of the matter is that if you don't have a real problem, you will get bored and leave anyhow after a short time because there are always more interesting things to do despite whatever great life lessons you learned from watching Fight Club, Orthonorm.

But, there are a lot of people who are finding that they cannot stop obsessing about porn, and science confirms that these folks have experienced a significant rewiring of their brains that will takes years of abstinence to repair. Telling them to 'just stop' works just as well with them as it does with an alcoholic who undergoes the same changes.

We, as the Church, do have some obligation to reach out to these people and try to help them. Sure, we could just ignore the problems as we often do. But then again, what does that say about us?

Orthonorm, I have to hear the confessions of people who are genuinely torn apart by the shame of their acting out. You may not care, and it is easy to take pot shots because you are not watching porn or you feel that you are managing your porn intake if you are. But, that's not much different than the folks who can hold a beer and mock the alcoholics and addicts lying in the street and say, 'All he needs to do is stop like I do.'

I knew very little about the science behind all of this until I was forced to learn about it because I get more and more requests for help.

Perhaps you can show a little mercy. I'm not asking you to change your opinion, because I know the chances of that are slim at best. What I am asking is that, for those who are reading this thread who may actually have a real problem with porn, that you not make them feel any worse than they already do.

Yes, thanks Father. Not a porn addict here and never seen the real interest in it. I lust as much as the next guy but I just find porn a bit far fetched, at least what I have caught of it. They all look too good, it's too dramatic an all that. It make sex into something animal like rather than divine and human. Not to be blasphemous but sexual intercourse is a divine act, a continuation of God's creation. "Be fruitful and multiply." But not just the command to continue the act of creation, but the union of two people becoming one in the bed, the union of love. There is something spiritual to it. What porn has done has make into a mere act to please the body and the baser appetites. Sex becomes something similar to animals mating, the baser animals, too. Because the birds, consider they often keep one partner for life and there is a sort of love between them. Even the father looks after the nest in some species. But in other animals the sexual act is just that. In spiders, for example, the female even eats the male many times after mating. In other animals the male simply leaves or even devours the young. And even the mothers do this sometimes! But humans, made in the image of God, they unite in the bed in love, the have reason and understand what love and so it is more than just some instinct like with birds or some appetite like with cats, where the tomcat in the mating season will come back with many wounds after fighting for his mate and then leaving her to have kittens. Porn, heterosexual porn, especially if it does become an addiction like it does for some makes one just as vile to nature, sometimes worse than sodomites.

So yes, I suppose a little compassion is in need like Father says. After all he hears confessions and hears the deepest wounds upon the human soul. Like my friend who was molested as a child had a bit of a problem with porn. He turned to sodomy even but now God has given him a wife to marry. He marries this summer. Every soul and every brain works differently. I do think people use some sort of "addiction" as an excuse sometimes, but I think porn or even work can become an addiction. Some workaholics do it because they grew up poor and now want to prove themselves. Silly and foolish, but hey, people are stupid.

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Hmmmmm... I think science is the only thing standing in the way of your theory.

Father, really I am not sure you really understand what is going on in science to make such a statement. I made no theory. I made a challenge. One that no one is going to be able to meet from stopping looking at porn, shopping, using nasal spray, etc. But one some alcoholics and benzoheads could.

I'll get back to your post later.

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Porn can definitely be an addiction, but it's easier to explain through cognitive and behavioural theory rather than a biological explanation, which most people tend to associate with addiction, e.g. smoking, alcoholism.If you can be addicted to gambling, for example, you can have a porn addiction.

Sounds like you are in a rush, because your post doesn't make too much sense. Yes, please get back to us when you have more time to formulate your thoughts. I'm very glad to discuss this with you for the sake not of convincing you, but helping others understand the problems of online porn addiction and the discoveries make about this highly addictive media.

What I am saying is that the latest science does demonstrate that porn addict is very real, and that the alterations to the brain are similar to that of alcoholics and other substance abusers.

It is also proven that porn addicts can recover from the cycle of viewing and masturbation, since the latter is real 'high' of the 'disease.' This does not mean that successful treatment leaves one Platonically unattracted to anything sexual, but rather that sexuality returns to its normal parameters.

Not everyone who watches porn becomes addicted, in answer to Augustin's query. However, the larger problem for society comes up with how porn influences our views of sexuality, whether it is how we see our bodies or what we think sex is supposed to be like. If you are watching hours and hours of beautiful women in these porn videos, it breeds a great deal of dissatisfaction when one turns to a very real woman and notices she isn't 'perfect.'

This causes husbands to withdraw from their wives, and wives to feel insecure. Then, the husband asks his wife to do the things in the videos, and she refuses because they are disgusting. This, of course, presupposes that a man can get married, since porn can, in some cases ruin a man's desire for real women altogether.

To say that porn is the loan culprit in distorting our sexuality is plain wrong. Advertising and dialectical materialism perpetuate the emphasis on sexual desire and indulgence. Porn is just the most psychoactive part of a bigger problem.

Frankly, I don't blame Orthonorm for his flippant remarks, because I held much the same attitude until I started having to work with people with this problem. To this day, there are some men that I simply tell, 'Stop it.' It is when they can't stop, when they come to me with tears and shattered expressions, that we know there is a much bigger problem.

Hmmmmm... I think science is the only thing standing in the way of your theory.

Father, really I am not sure you really understand what is going on in science to make such a statement. I made no theory. I made a challenge. One that no one is going to be able to meet from stopping looking at porn, shopping, using nasal spray, etc. But one some alcoholics and benzoheads could.

One problem is men are made different than women--women tend to want intimacy and sex for them is more naturally intimate to begin with. For men, it is intimate and men are not, like so many people think, just plain animals who want sex. But there is some truth to the fact that men desire more plainly the simple pleasure of the flesh. They don't require the same intimacy that women desire so porn is a more natural thing they seek out, just like men seek prostitution more often because for them buying a prostitute is a good way to satisfy their desire without having to make a commitment or have real intimacy. The problem is porn has become an industry and so they play on this instinct of men to simply seek out the pleasure and not intimacy.

Anyway, I actually think one reason pornography has become so widespread and common is that prostitution has been outlawed, which Christendom made it a point not to do. Augustine and Aquinas, as well as other historical Christian writers, justified legalised prostitution just for this reason--that one cannot control every moral evil and sometimes, to avoid greater ones, it is better to permit some moral evils, like prostitution. In Christendom it was under government control and I know that the Catholic Church approved of this, as did the Orthodox Church. The Church did not like it, but understood the need. There were Catholic orders of nuns I know that helped women get out of prostitution and live good lives but it was understood that prostitution legalised allowed the baser needs of men to satisfy them under government control. Outlawing it would just make it a black market industry and lead to greater evils. Since we have outlawed it interestingly sexual sin has become more rampant. I would say that there are a lot of factors in that, but pornography is an industry to take the place of legalised prostitution. In fact I think a man with a porn addiction is worse than a man who goes off and takes a mistress or buys a whore. He seeks things in his wife that he would never seek in a mistress of a prostitute because really porn does make sex very far fetched sometimes. Alas most of us will not get such good looking women for one and we should expect no decent woman to do what those women do in the videos. I agree with father that it makes our sexuality perverted and diseased, animal like. I find it worse than prostitution and even sodomy in some ways.

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I don't got one of those scanner thingees to put my John Hancock on here. Here is my Social Security Number though: XXX-XX-XXXX. Just figure out what the Xs mean.

Hmmmmm... I think science is the only thing standing in the way of your theory.

Father, really I am not sure you really understand what is going on in science to make such a statement. I made no theory. I made a challenge. One that no one is going to be able to meet from stopping looking at porn, shopping, using nasal spray, etc. But one some alcoholics and benzoheads could.

I'll get back to your post later.

I hope you haven't forgotten this.

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"May Thy Cross, O Lord, in which I seek refuge, be for me a bridge across the great river of fire. May I pass along it to the habitation of life." ~St. Ephraim the Syrian

Hmmmmm... I think science is the only thing standing in the way of your theory.

Father, really I am not sure you really understand what is going on in science to make such a statement. I made no theory. I made a challenge. One that no one is going to be able to meet from stopping looking at porn, shopping, using nasal spray, etc. But one some alcoholics and benzoheads could.

I'll get back to your post later.

I hope you haven't forgotten this.

No, I am going to get back to this.

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Advertising and dialectical materialism perpetuate the emphasis on sexual desire and indulgence. Porn is just the most psychoactive part of a bigger problem.

That's odd.

I haven't had the time to do really read through this thread, but if that is from the Father's writing it's not odd for him. He has a rather reductive notion of "addiction" which he couples with an often poorly articulated, if all too clear to some, reactionary political worldview.

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Actually, my views of addiction are fairly mainstream. Many of them come from reading scientific studies on addiction. If you can show me some research that contradicts what I say, I would be very interested in seeing what you have.

Advertising and dialectical materialism perpetuate the emphasis on sexual desire and indulgence. Porn is just the most psychoactive part of a bigger problem.

That's odd.

I haven't had the time to do really read through this thread, but if that is from the Father's writing it's not odd for him. He has a rather reductive notion of "addiction" which he couples with an often poorly articulated, if all too clear to some, reactionary political worldview.

I will be oversimplifying, but here is a short response: it has to do with seeing the world strictly in terms of material laws and 'natural order' without regard for the Divine. The entire world is seen as being without spirituality or God or anything other than natural forces, and these forces dictate further actions and reactions.

Dialectical materialism essentially leaves one an atheist, or believing that God is utterly transcendent in a way that He does not act in creation. So, when man encounters his fears and uses dialectical materialism, his only solutions are to be found within the natural order. In Christian spirituality, the natural order bears witness to God, but it is not the origin of all actions and reactions.

When you are talking about recovery from addiction, putting God into the person's worldview is absolutely essential. Materialism must ultimately be rejected.